Wit's End (14 page)

But the man's son is not so sure his father killed himself. It is this son who brings in Maxwell Lane and sets in motion the chain that will end with two more deaths—the second belonging to Brother Isaiah himself, and the third to Bim Lanisell's wife.

In the real world, there was a tenuous connection between the Oroville cult and Holy City. When the Oroville cult failed, Father Riker had offered to take in the survivors. He attached a couple of conditions: There would be none of that living-forever nonsense. And they had to shave their beards, cut their hair, and generally clean themselves up. Holy City, Father Riker said, was not interested in slobs. Among his own followers, Father Riker was known as The Comforter.

There is no record suggesting that any of the immortals accepted his offer.

Of course, the one night Rima came to dinner with murder on her mind, the subject was never raised. “Did you get one of the murders in
Ice City
from Constance Wellington?” she'd planned to ask as soon as there was an opening. “Was there a real murder?”

Instead there was only pointless chat about Oro Blanco grape-fruits. Someone had told Tilda they were in the market now, even though she knew it was far too early for Oro Blancos, and sure enough, when she'd asked the clerk, his little eyes widened as if he'd never heard such crazy talk. “I haven't had someone cut me dead that way,” Tilda said, “since I was on the street.” She passed Rima the salad bowl. The salad was made of figs and mint and string beans. Tilda made a clicking sound, like castanets.

She was wearing an audible necklace. It was large as well as loud, a string of shells and acorns and feathers, the sort of necklace that Andy Goldsworthy might make. The sort of necklace, in Rima's opinion, that could cause a clerk in a grocery store to cut you dead even if you hadn't been overly optimistic about grapefruit. Not that Rima minded the necklace herself. No one in such a necklace could ever come up behind you unexpectedly with a platter of roast chicken or an upraised carving knife. Tilda had been belled like a cat.

And just then Tilda asked, “Have you heard anything from Martin since the weekend?” So she'd sneaked up on Rima after all.

Rima thought it might be hurtful, if she'd gotten e-mails and Tilda hadn't, to say so. Then she thought it wouldn't be truthful to not say so. So she said she'd had an e-mail, but there was a suspicious pause between the question and the answer and, in fact, she'd had two e-mails, so though it wasn't a lie, it wasn't as truthful as it could have been.

It seemed she ought to go on to say what the e-mail had been about, but that was even more complicated. Would Tilda be pleased or upset to think that Martin might have come again to Wit's End if only Rima hadn't turned him down?

The whole thing put Rima off balance, so she never did mention the murder. That was the thing about a cold case. There was no particular hurry.

After dinner, the three women and the two dogs went up to the second-floor TV room to watch
Lost,
which Addison had Ti-Voed. There were two dollhouses in the TV room.
Average Mean
—botulism in the green beans—and
H
₂
Zero—
instantly recognizable for its under-the-sea death.
H
₂
Zero
was one of the weaker novels, but an excellent dollhouse, a functioning saltwater aquarium with real fish and the ceramic scuba diver often seen in aquariums, only this one's air hose had been severed. A toy octopus floated over the corpse, because Addison loved octopi. They were clever, clever creatures, she said, and because of this she never ate them.

The whole thing was the devil to clean, of course.

Addison's chair reclined. Rima and Tilda shared the couch, which had padded arms on which to put your head, and scarves and throws and dachshunds for added warmth.

Addison announced that she was having a glass of whiskey to celebrate what now looked to be the taking of the Senate. In truth, Addison had a whiskey most nights; if she wasn't celebrating, then the Bush administration was driving her to drink. “I'm going to enjoy this moment,” she said. “Even if it proves Pyrrhic. All my life I've been locked in eternal struggle with the same people over the same things. Vietnam, Iraq. ‘It's not a crime if the president does it.' Wiretaps, voter suppression. We lefties have to enjoy the few victories we've had.”

Rima's father had said much the same thing. He'd written columns about it. Although he'd also noted the strange reconfiguration—the enemy of my enemy is my friend—that resulted in a new thaw between the old liberals and the CIA. Some things had changed and some things hadn't. Rima started to say this, but when she turned, Addison was wiping her eyes, which could have been a simple, sleepy gesture or could have meant she was crying. Drink sometimes did that to people.

A low-wattage lamp cast a circle of light onto the ceiling. There was the soft bubble of the aquarium, the unlikely threat of polar bears on the television. If Addison had had collies they would have been gathered anxiously around her, but she had dachshunds so they weren't. Stanford was on Tilda's lap. Berkeley had crawled under the couch so that only her tail showed. It twitched now and then.

“Cheney. Rumsfeld. Abrams. Negroponte, for Christ's sake. We seemed so young and they seemed so old when it all started,” Addison said. “How is it that we got old, but they're still here? It's like something out of a Greek myth.” There was nothing sad in her voice. Probably she wasn't crying, after all.

“It's a
Star Trek
episode,” said Tilda. “I mean, I don't know that it's not Greek too. But definitely
Star Trek.
The black-white one.”

Addison took a sip, and Rima could see her throat tighten as the whiskey went down. “It's a zombie movie,” she said. “It's
Night of the
goddamn
Living Dead.
”

Rima left Addison locked in eternal struggle and went up to her bedroom, where she still didn't have the wireless key.

People in Cleveland claimed to miss her, but they were getting pregnant, buying rugs off the Internet, going to concerts, playing intramural sports anyway. They were coping.

There was a third e-mail from Martin. Subject line: Ice City. There was no telling what an e-mail tagged “Ice City” might be about. Rima was surprised to find herself nervous when she opened it. And then disappointed, so very disappointed that it wiped out both the previous friendly e-mails—the invitations to haunted wineries and mysterious gravitational anomalies, even the observation that she had cat's eyes, now seemed like groundwork for this. She went back to not liking Martin so much.

Martin had a plan for a bar in downtown Santa Cruz, a space as close as possible to the location of Maxwell Lane's fictional office and called, of course, Ice City. The decor would be from the books, photographs of people Maxwell had had his imaginary conversations with, or else
their
books and paintings and what have you. Martin hadn't worked it all out. But buying into the reality of Maxwell Lane would be key. There would be no mention of A. B. Early anywhere, which, given how much she liked her privacy, Martin thought she would see as a plus. Martin wanted Rima to talk A. B. Early into financing this. It was important the proposal come from someone Addison liked.

But no pressure on Rima. Though she too could buy in early. It wasn't a request so much as an opportunity. It was a surefire moneymaker, in Martin's opinion. Did Rima even know how many people came to Santa Cruz every year looking for the settings in Addison's books, trying to find Maxwell's home and office? He would love to talk to her more about it, either in person or by phone, Rima's choice.

Rima's choice was none of the above. But she didn't e-mail back. Her own rule was not to write e-mails after midnight and, if you couldn't stop yourself from writing them, then certainly not to send them.

This is an excellent rule. It probably should apply to paper mail as well as electronic.

T
hat night Rima had her third dream about Maxwell Lane. She was walking with him on the beach below Wit's End. The sky was starless, but the water glowed with an eerie green light. The waves broke on the sand like emeralds.

Out in the middle distance, floating on that luminous green, was a boat. Rima could just make out the shadowy figure of a man on deck. He was sweeping the beach with a telescope, left, then right, as if he was looking for something in particular.

Even in her dream, Rima remembered hearing that boats represent death. Lincoln had dreamt of a boat before he was murdered, or so people said. She had a feeling the man on deck might finally be her father, come to say good-bye. But the telescope stopped its sweep, settled on her, and she knew he wasn't. The knowledge that this man could see her face and she couldn't see his was terrifying. Around the boat the glowing waves rose in the air. The landscape turned to green towers with turrets, which became green high-rises with windows, which became a photograph of the gray buildings of downtown Cleveland.

Maxwell stepped into the photo, turning as he did so, holding out his hand for Rima, so that was the way he stayed, with his hand out like that. She tried to follow, even though she didn't want to be in the picture, because she didn't want to be left behind either. But whatever door had allowed Maxwell in was closed to Rima.

She was still frightened, but now it was mostly for him. Someone tried to kill him pretty much every goddamn book. Just how long could his luck hold out? It wasn't as if Rima would save him; there was no one she had managed to save. The whole thing was so intense it woke her up.

She was in her old Shaker Heights bedroom, wallpapered with climbing yellow roses, her mother calling her to breakfast. What a horrible dream, she thought, happy it was over, and then her mother called for Oliver to come down too, so she knew that her mother didn't know about Oliver. The prospect of telling her was so awful it woke Rima up.

She was in her bed at Wit's End and Oliver was still gone, but now her mother was too. This was unbearably disappointing. Maxwell's arms were around her. He whispered into her ear. “You think I'm real,” he said, “just because I'm here,” but when she turned in bed to find him, the pillow was empty.

This woke her up for sure and it was four in the morning, but when she actually opened her eyes it was only three. So there was absolutely no way to know when or if the dream had ended.

You think I'm real just because I'm sitting across from you.

—A. B. Early,
interview with
Rolling Stone,
no. 372
(
June 1982
)

The next morning Rima had breakfast with Scorch and Cody and the
Good Times
newspaper. Scorch was wearing pants that were all shaggy around the legs as if one of the dogs had been chewing on them. Rima would never dare wear such pants; she was bound to lose her keys in the fray.

Scorch had been hit in the head with a tennis ball on the beach and was in a bad mood as a result. “The guy had one of those flippy things,” she told Rima. “One of those flippy things for dogs so you can throw the ball harder.” Those flippy things were called Chuckit!s. Rima didn't know how she knew this.

“Lots of people wouldn't apologize for getting hit in the head,” Cody said.

Scorch told him to fuck off. “I'm
so
sorry if I say the wrong thing when I'm in shock and my ears are ringing.”

“Sometimes ‘I'm sorry' isn't an apology,” Rima said.

“Thank you,” said Scorch.

Cody's T-shirt was blue and had “Mr. Toots Coffeehouse” written on the front. Rima could see that he maybe might be black, though if she'd had to guess, she would have guessed Italian. She thought Cody would go well with a glass of Chianti, and not in the
Silence of the Lambs
way.

This week's
Good Times
featured an article on the male pursuit of personal beauty, complete with photographs. But if sex was on Rima's mind, the fault was not the
Good Times'
but Maxwell Lane's.

“I dreamt about Maxwell Lane last night,” she said. She remembered lying in bed with him, his whispering into her ear. “A bad dream,” she added, just in case they were picturing the same thing.

Cody and Scorch had given up eggs in deference to the dogs. Scorch was eating nothing but toast and marmalade, and she didn't even like marmalade because of the orange peel, but the gesture was unappreciated. The dogs sat at her feet, keening their bewilderment. “I'm sorry,” Scorch told them. “But could you please shut up?”

Cody turned to Rima. “You're living in his house. I don't think it's too surprising he'd put in an appearance.” Cody had written a term paper on Addison. He'd read all the books, and he had theories. One was that the real mystery of the Maxwell Lane mysteries was Maxwell Lane. Each book had its murder, of course, and each was organized around the solution of same. But the overarching mystery was Maxwell himself. “It's what keeps people reading,” Cody said.

Scorch scraped some of her marmalade back into the jar with her knife. “Lots of them haven't kept reading. She was selling less every book. She told me so herself.”

“Because she stopped advancing the Maxwell Lane story. It's what I'm saying,” Cody said. “She got so secretive, it's like she doesn't think Maxwell's life is anybody's business anymore. He's hardly there in the last two books.”

Scorch swallowed her toast and shook her head. “That's not it. They don't like the way she'd been writing him. You should read the forums.”